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Sorry it's taken me so long to answer you Cosmos but I have been a bit busy word counting. Anyway, thanks for being patient waiting for answers for almost 2 years!

To cut a long story sideways, my trusty mole in the bowels of Wikipedia tells me that 'Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus' a French novel by Georges and/or Madeleine de Scudéry Augustin Courbé (1649–53) is the world's longest novel - it runs to a hefty 13,095 pages or nearly 2 million words (1,954,300 words to be exact).

However...

Here's some good news to all you Australians, the MentalFloss website poo-poos Wiki and says that longest novel in the world is actually an Australian novel called "The Blah Story" by Nigel Tomm - and that novel is m i l e s longer at 3,277,227 words even though it only runs to a mere 7,312 pages.

Okay, okay, so the French book is about 5,000 or so pages longer than the Aussie "Blah Story", but I say it is only the word count that is the reliable way to tell which book is the longest - after all, that French book may have more pages but the pages could easily be much smaller, and the type could be in much larger point size. Oui?

I haven't read either book so I can't really say. But Wiki goes on to say that "The Blah Story" contains the world's longest word and the world's longest ever sentence - the sentence starts in Volume 16 of the novel, continues right through Volume 17, and ends somewhere in Volume 18.

But, but, but...There's one dreadfully worrying thing about "The Blah Story" and that is that it is described as an abstract novel. Never read an abstract novel so I had to google it.

I googled the words "The Blah Story" by Nigel Tomm and I looked in Images at its squillions of sample pages and to be honest "The Blah Story" don't look much like any uvver novel wot I have read. In fact, it doesn't anything at all like any novel I have read. Quite the opposite.

But Cosmos, try googling "The Blah Story" by Nigel Tomm yourself and you'll see what I mean.

So all told, maybe those Frenchies do have the world record after all? Who knows? To be sure, check out those three websites listed below and then also have a peek in Google Images for "The Blah Story" by Nigel Tomm and have a look at all the opened sample pages of the novel and then you decide for yourself. Best of luck!

PS I can't say if "The Blah Story" is still in print - you could ask your local bookshop in Australia, they'd know and probably be able to order it for you to read through those long winter nights.

And I can't be sure that 'Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus is in print or was even published in paper back back (it certainly wouldn't have been in paperback, back in the 1600s).

Maybe someone else on IA knows if they're still in print and can give you the answers?